Right Angle began as a column in the now-defunct Sunday magazine in November 1991. The column allowed me the luxury of presenting an alternative to the prevailing left-liberal consensus in India. It has become the implicit signature tune for all my subsequent writings.

Saturday, March 16, 2013

Who governs this nation?

By Swapan Dasgupta

Those familiar with the political history of India
since the decline of the Moghul Empire in the 18th century will
easily detect a common thread that runs through to the present: the weaker the
regime the greater the levels of intrigue and conspiracy in the courts. In
Bengal, for example, the levels of intrigue reached colossal heights in the
courts of Siraj-ud-Doulah, Mir Jafar and Mir Qasim—nawabs who combined
impetuousness with eroding authority. And in western India, the term “Peshwai
intrigue” became a stereotype for displays of purposeless cunning so much so
that Veer Savarkar lamented the great Vedantist Baji Rao II’s inability to
distinguish between a kingdom and a pension.

It may seem far-fetched to extend the mystical
charms of oriental intrigue to the India of Manmohan Singh. Yet, occasionally,
such a temptation is irresistible.

Last Wednesday morning—before the Prime Minister
intervened in Parliament to inform Italy of “consequences” if it persisted in
harbouring the two fugitive marines—a bizarre story began doing the rounds of
the political towns of Delhi. The PM had, the previous day, met agitated MPs
from Kerala and had placated them with the message that he too felt found the
attitude of Italy completely unacceptable. The PM’s assurance soon found its
way into the newsrooms and some of the next morning’s newspapers even had a
mention of it. Yet, it seems that late at night some media people were
contacted by a Race Course Road functionary and told that there was no need to
over-interpret the PM’s displeasure.

When the PM got to know of this spin-doctoring the
proverbial excreta, it is said, hit the ceiling. According to those who claim
to be in the know of the innards of the system, he posed a fundamental
question: who controls the Prime Minister’s Office? It’s a question many have
privately asked and now, it seemed, the PM had stumbled on the same query.

It is a matter of some solace that the PM did not
budge from his original displeasure with the proverbial ‘nation-in-law’. His
intervention in Parliament may have lacked delivery but its larger message was
quite forthright.

At the same time, the question persists: why was
there an attempt to dilute India’s outrage over Rome giving a new twist to the
concept of “most favoured nation”? Was this a unilateral gesture by a courtier
who was trying to second-guess the ‘real’ power centre? Or, was there some
basis to the thwarted revisionism? In that case, from where did it originate?

These are questions that will never be
satisfactorily answered. When it comes to the intrigues of the court, no
absolute verification is really possible. What is important, however, is not
whether an attempt was made to underplay the significance of Italy’s hostile
action—if it was, you can be rest assured that Indian diplomacy will not pursue
the issue relentlessly and, instead, allow it to fade away from public memory.
To my mind, the significance lies in the fact that even in matters that involve
national sovereignty and India’s place in the world, the preoccupation of the
court is factional one-upmanship.

Those who narrated the supposed sequence of events
to me were gleeful that the PM had “asserted” himself. But the mere fact that
the PM did what the occasion demanded invoked a celebratory mood among those
who still retain a soft corner for him is itself revealing. It suggests that the
mind of the government is in a haze and systemic dysfunction so deep-rooted
that the movements of the left and right hands are wilfully uncoordinated.

India’s stock in the world has fallen so alarmingly
in the past year that Rome doesn’t think twice before flashing two fingers at
New Delhi and Islamabad is brazen enough to pass a provocative resolution on
Afzal Guru in its National Assembly. Nor does it stop here. Even Maldives
doesn’t feel that Indian counsels amount to very much. In the game of
international politics, India is precariously poised to become the football—an
object that can be kicked around merrily because its rulers are busy settling
factional scores and its functionaries are gleefully taking advantage of a
prevailing power vacuum.

It is wrong to believe that the state of drift we
are witnessing today is a function of incoherent economic policies. That one
wing of the government wants to end its term with a colossal display of fiscal
profligacy while another wing is pondering over the judgment of history is only
part of the problem. The unpalatable truth, that we as Indians must recognise,
is that we are confronted with a lame duck government that has lost both the
will and the authority to function.

One pillar of notional authority is concerned with
the legacy question; another, and more formidable, pillar is preoccupied with
the question of inheritance; and the third is self-absorbed with evolving
management information systems. Last week, on Times Now, a belligerent retired Pakistan Admiral mocked India for
its hollowness. It made a lot of us very angry but there was a ring of truth
behind his sneer.

The question is: who
governs India? This is a puzzle that is awaiting a solution. From yearning to
be a regional superpower, we have been left celebrating that we are at least
better off than Pakistan. Some achievement!

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About Me

The Right is an endangered community in India's English-language media. I happen to be one of the few to have retained a precarious toehold in the mainstream media. I intend this blog as a sounding board of ideas and concerns.
You can read the details of my education, professional experience and political inclinations on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swapan_Dasgupta).
RIGHT ANGLE is an archive of my published articles. USUAL SUSPECTS is my blog.